Fantastic article, Simon. I was out for a pint or two last night and it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to the referendum.
One guy, a Yorkshireman, advised me that he wasn’t voting. His inclination was to vote “no”, the reason being that he was a small businessman who relied quite heavily on RAF Lossiemouth for much of his trade, and that he feared for the future of the base after a “yes” vote. He added that he didn’t want to vote “no” because he didn’t want that to negate support for independence. Some may say that’s an admirable thing to do, but it saddened me a little – firstly because the scaremongering of the “no” campaign has hit home, and secondly because if he genuinely did want to vote “no” he should do so.
He then went on to say that independence would be a wake-up call for England. Yorkshire, Lancashire and the North-east would want more powers. Bring it on. I don’t know how local assemblies would work in England; would it be better to have regional bodies, or devolve to county level? I’m probably more in favour of the latter, and in the event of a “yes” vote in Scotland, I’d like to see the large unitary authorities broken up into much smaller parts so that the people can feel some kind of connection with those who are elected to govern them.